A careful man I want to be,
A little fellow follows me;
I do not dare go astray,
For fear he’ll go the self-same way.
I cannot once escape his eyes,
Whate’er he sees me do, he tries;
Like me he says he’s going to be,
The little chap who follows me.
He thinks that I am good and fine,
Believes in every word of mine;
The base in me he must not see,
The little chap who follows me.
I must remember as I go,
Through summer’s sun and winter’s snow;
I’m building for the years to be
That little chap who follows me.

After several years of, primarily, running and cycling I’ve decided to try getting stronger instead. There are a few reasons for this:

* I believe in having the strength to save myself or my family.
* I wanted to find a way to excersise that didn’t tax my heart so much. No matter what I’ve tried I’ve never been able to get myself out of my Peak HR Zone while running or riding. As a person with high BP I felt this was critical to helping me stay healthier for longer in life.
* I wanted to lose some fat and get a better physique. I’m the type of person who puts on fat around my organs, known as Visceral Fat. This type of fat is actually worse for you and increases your risk of heart attack / disease. Plus, it tends to give me the “bubble belly” look (AKA. “the beer gut”).

So, what am I doing? StrongLifts 5×5, that’s what. It’s a great beginners program that has some heafty roots (*ahem* … a guy named Arnold) where you start light and gradually put on weight. It focuses on only 5 barbell exercises: Squat, Bench Press, Barbell Row, Overhead Press, and Deadlift. Each day (M/W/F) you do three of the exercises (every day you squat). Nice and simple, I like it.

I’ve only just begun, but so far I’ve been digging it. The workouts are shorter and my workout HR is much more in-line with where it needs to be (fat burning zone). I can’t wait to see where this takes me and what result this will have on my running and cycling, which I enjoy and will not be giving up.

Over the next couple weeks I’m going to be putting some thought into each and trying to determine if I want to keep them around. I like them all, but if I’m not going to focus on them I need to move them along.

[Vagrant Bikes](http://vagrantbikes.com) could just be a simple thing that just sits there and if someone wants a bike, well, I’ll just build them a bike.

This site I could just make into a holder for my other properties and then it’d take zero time.

Since logging out of work on July 3rd at 1pm and starting my vacation I:

* Ran 13.97 miles
* Rode 14.75 miles
* Went fishing with my Dad and caught a 10″ bass
* … and a sunburn
* … and threw the fish back
* Toured [Fredrick Meijer Gardens](http://www.meijergardens.org) (one of my favorite places)
* … and that trip was the first official vacation trip we did as a family
* Cut down a tree in our front yard
* Worked on my side project [Mat Finder](http://matfinder.com)
* … for my side business [utmsoft.com](http://utmsoft.com)
* Got up almost every day between 5-6am
* And best of all, spent lots of time with Reese So, that’s what I did for my week and a few days off…

Know that life is not fair and that you will fail often, but if you take some risks, step up when the times are toughest, face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden and never, ever give up if you do these things, then next generation and the generations that follow will live in a world far better than the one we have today and what started here will indeed have changed the world for the better.